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Climates, directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, darling of the festival circuit and maker of the brilliant Uzak, is another stark and austere drama on man’s inherent need and failure to connect. Set in an increasingly detached and distant Turkish diaspora, Climates is about the breakdown of a seemingly happy relationship where the resultant turbulence felt by the concerned couple is more inward than outward. A university professor and his much younger girlfriend who works for a TV channel (played, in a brave casting decision, by the director and his real-life wife) who, while on a vacation after a long time, realize that they have drifted too apart emotionally to remain happy together. However, despite rekindling a raw physical affair with an old flame, the laconic guy realizes that he is now lonelier than ever before, and thus makes one last attempt to bridge the huge chasm that has developed between him and his former fiancé. The narrative is slow, and long moments of silence rather than words define most of the proceedings – thus making this a difficult watch for most. Contrarily, if one is willing to put in some effort and allow the movie to reveal its various layers and subtleties, he will not regret watching this intense and beautifully photographed human drama.
Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama
Language: Turkish
Country: Turkey
Directed by Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Uzak is an astounding piece of arthouse cinema that has the ability to keep its viewers in a state of daze long after the end credits have rolled. The basic premise is ridiculously simple – the heavily structured life of a freelance photographer residing in Istanbul, Yusuf, gets thrown off balance upon the arrival of his rustic cousin, Mahmut, in search of employment at the docks at the roll of an economic downturn in Turkey. What the premise fails to reveal is that this is a devastatingly affecting look into the severe loneliness of the two protagonists and their futile attempts at trying to make human contact, be it with his divorced wife, in Yusuf’s case, or with the aloof Yusuf and a young girl who has caught his eyes, in the genial Mahmut’s case. The interactions between the two taciturn characters have been brought forth through subtle, carefully placed observations. The tale of the two jaded and detached characters, the languorous pacing of the narrative, and the long moments of silence and inaction, might be off-putting for some viewers; I, on the contrary, was left speechless by the existential script, the powerful statement on the complexities surrounding otherwise banal existences, the underlying pathos that peeks out only once in a while amid the dry humour, and the incredibly naturalistic performances by the two actors. And the ravishingly beautiful images of the cold, icy and desolate landscapes form the most ironic metaphor for the equally bleak, albeit splendid, human story that unfolds before it.
Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Genre: Drama/Urban Drama/Psychological Drama
Language: Turkish
Country: Turkey
Fatih Akin’s The Edge of Heaven is a morally and psychologically complex tale on human nature – the inherent fallibility in human character, and his futile attempts at reconciling with his life and love. Given that Akin is of Turkish origin, but was born and brought up in Germany, political and cultural diasporas of both the countries form the perfect setting for the rich, temporally fractured tale of three sets of unconnected parent-child pairs brought together through subtle interventions of ‘fate’ – a short-tempered hard-drinking Turkish immigrant and his quiet, educated professor-son; a prostitute living on the streets of Hamburg and her anarchist daughter who’s part of a radical political outfit in Turkey; and, a disapproving German lady and her rebellious daughter. Coincidence plays a strong role as the six fiercely independent yet lonely individuals (incidentally or accidentally) embark a tragic collision course through the vicious cycle of love, loss and their various repercussions. Continuing on the theme of death and bereavement, the emotionally charged movie is gritty like Head-On (though certainly not as much), with an elegiac tone that is deeply affecting. The acting, it ought to be mentioned, is very good without ever being flashy or spectacular.
Director: Fatih Akin
Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama/Political Drama/Ensemble Film
Language: Turkish/German
Country: Turkey/Germany
The epithets that might closely define Fatih Akin’s Head-On are, in my opinion, grimy, brooding and bare-assed. Akin completely stripped off any sugar-coatings while displaying human frailties and loneliness at their rawest and most naked – both literally and otherwise. The movie concerns the unlikely emotional connect that develops between two severely self-destructive Turkish immigrants residing in Germany – Cahit, an angst-ridden, hard-drinking 40-something widower living in a state of perpetual disarray, and Sibel, a suicidal young girl whose free, rebellious spirit is at complete odds with her restrictive and conservative family – both roles passionately and fearlessly performed. Despite its content of intense emotions, the movie never plays out as either sentimental or exploitative; rather, it is disturbing, downbeat, provocative and unabashedly erotic. In fact, by using a Turkish folk-song as a motif and to loosely divide the movie into various chapters, it seemed to me structurally quite similar to Lars von Triar’s devastating masterpiece Breaking the Waves. And by mixing punk and grunge rock tracks with exotic Turkish numbers in the score, Akin has managed to be unflinchingly brutal yet surprisingly humane in nearly every frame of the movie.
Director: Fatih Akin
Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama/Romance
Language: German/Turkish
Country: Germany/Turkey
